Lostboycrow Takes Flight With the Completion of a Trilogy

If you’re looking for more information on the artist known as Lostboycrow, your best bet is going to be either listening to his music or checking out his social media. Through those two mediums, the otherwise-enigmatic songwriter shares his innermost feelings, beliefs, and life experiences with his critics and fans while keeping the mysterious aura surrounding much of his day-to-day life as dense as ever. In many ways, it’s that level of the unknown mixed with the complexity of his music that keeps fans coming back to the young crooner — including on his brand new EP, Traveler: The Third Legend.

“I really hope it finds a space for the parts of us that feel most trapped — creatively, romantically, or physically by our age, location, or obligations,” Lostboycrow says of his latest work. “Each Legend has a title within itself — a theme. I knew going into it that the third legend would be titled ‘Like the River Runs Free.’ I wanted that to be more of an exploration, letting the uncertainty and unknown guide me into making songs unlike any I had made lyrically, sonically, or otherwise.”

Much like the first two parts of his Traveler trilogy, Lostboycrow’s new release defies the rules of most standard genres and musical classifications. Falling somewhere between electropop and R&B, the long-haired musician has rapidly carved out a niche for himself as an equally catchy and poetic voice of the youth. By not falling too far into the generation’s hipster artist tropes, there’s a certain timelessness in Lostboycrow’s music that could help it bridge the generation gap between his avid fans and their mumble rap-hating parents.

“[An artist’s sound comes] from what you grew up listening to, what you’re currently listening to, and that almost undefinable bit of real magic that lives in your bones and won’t rest until it finds a way out,” Lostboycrow says. “I guess for me it was less of a decision and more of a deep seeded appreciation for the sounds around me — like Frank Ocean, hearing Coldplay for the first time as a kid, Les Misérables, the hum of a quiet rainy day in Amsterdam, or the monumental silence of a Montana hillside. I always want to find ways to intertwine the rawness of folk and storytelling with the pulling excitement of a good synth — and always be true to the way my voice wants to tell those stories [with] an intimacy, a sensualness, a lullaby, and a sense of fun.”

As any new artist could confirm, creating music worth listening to is only half of the battle for modern performers. Without a solid online presence, the best debut EP in the world could get lost in the vast wastelands of Soundcloud, Spotify, and Apple Music, or whatever it is that Tidal consists of these days. Thankfully, Lostboycrow doesn’t have to worry about that, with thousands upon thousands of diehard fans following him on every imaginable platform adding up to over 80 million total streams of his tracks. For fans, it’s the only way to not only see the carefully curated content that their favorite songbird is putting out into the world, but also to get his thoughts on the world — or which episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee he’s currently watching.

“Both [social media and music] are such unique expressions, and I think there are worlds waiting to be discovered in each of us that we get to sort of make up as we go along — especially as artists,” Lostboycrow says. “I think those expressions can be invitations for others to live there with us, even for only a few minutes. Better yet, they can inspire others to build their own with an endlessness that can only be described as creativity and love.

“That being said, sometimes you just want to use the Riverdale hashtag on Twitter,” the artist continues. “I’m only a man. Anyway I’d hope that social media — along with the visuals — allow people to see me and, most importantly, see how I see myself through the world I get to create.”

Josh Chesler used to play baseball for some pretty cool teams, but now he just writes about awesome stuff like tattoos, music, MMA and sneakers. He enjoys injuring himself by skateboarding, training for fights, and playing musical instruments in his off time.